Category: Dear Lopy

I’ve got one of those so-called video iPods. It’s fine that I can download television shows and movies from iTunes, but I’ve already got a huge DVD collection. I don’t really see the need to re-purchase programs that I already own. It seems like I should be able to transfer my DVD’s to my iPod. iTunes is great about copying my CD collection. How come it can’t do the same thing with my DVD collection?

I recently purchased a few movies from one of those “legal” video download services that you guys are always talking about. For some reason they won’t play on my video iPod and I can’t burn them onto DVDs. Hell, I can’t even watch these movies on my laptop if I’m not connected to The Internets. A friend suggested that it might have something to do with DRM, whatever that is. So, how do I remove DRM from my WMV files?

Signed,
Stuck With DRM (whatever that is)
Dear Stuck:
[ad#AdSense1] The limitations you’ve run into are typical of the current generation of downloadable video services. For what it’s worth, you’d have the same problem if you downloaded a movie from iTunes and wanted to burn a DVD or play it on a non-Apple portable.

While DRM is inconvenient, it’s been put in place for a reason — to control consumer access to digital content. In the pre-digital world consumers enjoyed a wide variety of rights that were generally considered to be “fair use”. For example, consumers could easily make copies of analog media for personal use, or to transfer media from one format to another format.